


We were once men

by mochiandtea



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Obsession, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier, Vaguely graphic, Violence, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, but brief in description, not a healthy relationship or focus, sort of, what do you expect from brainwashing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 15:55:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2856638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mochiandtea/pseuds/mochiandtea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is what Shield knows: there is a plane in the Arctic, most technology inside frozen useless. Inside the plane, there is a hollow, in the perfect shape of a rectangular block. It is smooth cut, unnatural save for the few layers of frost gradually roughening those smooth cuts. Captain America is nowhere in the sunken plane.</p><p>This is what Shield knows: Captain America's body has been taken, and not by them. Desecration.</p><p>What Shield doesn't know: Captain America is still alive.</p><p>What Shield doesn't know: Captain America is dead.</p><p>Shield knows little about ghosts.</p><p>[The two greatest Assets ever created: the Winter Soldier, and the Captain.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	We were once men

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas! Or belated merry Christmas, depending on what country you're in.
> 
> This story is not beta-read, and I am Australian, hence the way I spell some words. Please take that into account.
> 
> I've put violence in the tags. It's not very long, or very detailed. Still, best to tag it.

Claws at his head, tearing at him, through his scalp, through his skull, into his mind, needle incisors digging in and _gouging nononoNORUN_ –twisting but he can't move but he has to run push _pushPUSH_ –

**_"Stop, the restraints are breaking! Get the tranquiliser!"_ **

Free keep moving keep running don't stop just blink the blood out of his eyes–but there is no blood–

**_"Tranq him!"_ **

_Duck!_ He charges forward with head and torso bowed, barrels into something–person gun he needs that–throws the man backwards, hears bullets squelching into the body– _God forgive me_ – God? No! Run run run somewhere–run where where is he?–

**_"He's too fast and too strong, he's going to escape!"_ **

**_"Get him, he's just returned, get HIM–!"_ **

Run _runRUN_ –he stops.

There's blue eyes, teeth bared leaping at him, and he goes down with those blue eyes, there's cold fingers crushing his throat can't breathe _can'tbreathe_ he's scrabbling and reaching up–grab–yank–

**_"Quick, tranquiliser!"_ **

There's blue eyes, ice eyes, metal around his throat, and they're both so cold and so strange, did he know them? He chokes and gags and he strokes the hair in his fist across those glaring eyes, those glaring ice eyes that shift into freezing seawater blocking his nose and throat and lungs as he goes under–

Cold fingers crush. Squeeze. Loosen.

Swallow swallow swallow and–"I know you," he gasps.

A prick in his thigh, and he knows nothing.

 

***

 

This is what the public knows: Captain America died in 1945, sinking a plane full of bombs with him into the Arctic. He died a hero, a great pity his body could never be recovered.

This is what more well informed benign intelligence knows: Captain America died in 1945, sinking a plane full of bombs with him into the Arctic. Due to the serum in his blood, his body may still be recoverable. He died a hero, his body should be recovered if possible.

This is what Shield knows: everything the more well informed benign intelligence knows.

This is what Shield knows: there is a plane in the Arctic, most technology inside frozen useless. Inside the plane, there is a hollow, in the perfect shape of a rectangular block. It is smooth cut, unnatural save for the few layers of frost gradually roughening those smooth cuts. Captain America is nowhere in the sunken plane.

This is what Shield knows: Captain America's body has been taken, and not by them. Desecration.

What Shield doesn't know: Captain America is still alive.

What Shield doesn't know: Captain America is dead.

Shield knows little about ghosts.

 

***

 

He wakes. His body does not.

For what seems like eternity, silence surrounds him, frost-heavy and chilling. He cannot move, cannot see, cannot speak. Occasionally, he hears a hushed murmur, softer than leaves in a breeze, and he clings to the sound, the only proof he has that he is not completely alone in the cold and dark.

He is weightless, and he is trapped, vapour in an airtight room, and he wants nothing more than to _move_.

Eventually prickles interrupt his longing. It is irritating, and it almost hurts. Instinctively, he tries to flick the irritation away. He is amazed to discover something, whatever substance he is, _responds_. Limbs. Fingers. He’s moved his fingers.

The hushed murmur rises to an excited shout. Then it’s gone. Completely. No shout. No murmur. Cold black silence.

He would scream if he could. Thrash if he could. Destroy the silence and the stillness. He cannot. His fingers spasm, and then still. Patience, he tells himself. His fingers came back, maybe everything else will too.

An eternity later, the prickles extend further than his fingers, and he wants it to stop, just stop. Surely the trapped weightlessness is better than this continuous sting.

Tap-tap, tap-tap. Silence. He strains himself searching for the noise. Anything.

“Captain.”

Captain?

“You are safe, Captain. You are in a recovery facility.”

It should mean something to him. But everything is so fuzzy, feeling and hearing in muted tones. His sluggish consciousness cannot properly recall what this is meant to mean, but the calm tone is reassuring.

The voice pipes up again. Explains something about a new treatment. It will hurt immensely, but it is necessary, and he must bear through it. Try and be still if he can. Well, it’s not like he can really move, anyway.

Something snaps around his fingers. No, higher, his wrists. Then far below, his ankles. Restraints. A guard, slipped into an orifice, and he has discovered his mouth.

White, white, it’s so bright. Illuminates and banishes. The prickles disappear, and he can feel everything.

White _fire._

He screams.

 

***

 

It is 1954. Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes has long been pronounced dead. Bucky Barnes lives still.

Bucky Barnes is lost. He is lost in a sea of white fire, with no way to cross over or around it. He looks up, and there should be blonde hair, blue eyes looking down, pulling him up, pulling him out, but there is no one and he burns.

" _Steve_ ," he screams, is all his lips remember how to shape. The white fire takes everything else, sterilises and leaves nothing but ash in its wake. He will keep this one thing, if nothing else.

He screams. He cries. Begs for mercy. Only one name ever slips from his lips.

It is 1954, and the scientists have finally resorted to the most ordinary way of breaking a man's spirit. Nothing else works.

They show him a newspaper. They start with just one. **Captain America takes down plane in heroic last act!** the headline screams, and Bucky Barnes does not believe it.

"Lies," he spits, and keeps calling. Never Captain America. _Steve_.

They show him more newspapers, more articles. Captain America crashes plane, dies in heroic act. Captain America no more. The death of Captain America. And then, an obituary, for Captain Steven Grant Rogers. A hero's memorial, Steven Grant Rogers carved into cold stone.

" _Lies!_ **_LIES!_** " he snarls. Screams.

Peggy pleads with Steve to find somewhere to land. Steve apologises, knows it is futile. They arrange a date and–the recorded radio transmission cuts out, leaving silence in its wake.

Bucky doubles over like a bullet to the gut. Shakes violently.

"Lies," he sobs. "Steve, Stevie, you promised, you promised 'til–" and he weeps and weeps and finally lies still.

Restraints over his wrists, his ankles, his throat. Bucky does not struggle. Bucky is catatonic.

The next time the white fire comes, it burns away all remainders. Leaves a blank slate. Bucky Barnes dies.

A ghost rises in his place.

 

***

 

White fire, it sears roots through his brain and he can't escape, he thrashes and screams until there is blood in his throat and noise dies on the raw minced texture of his oesophagus. He does not wonder where he is. He does not wonder who he is. Feels no prickles, nothing.

There is only white fire, liquid corrosive burn through his mind, and the calm voice, repeating a word over and over again.

**_"Again."_ **

 

***

 

"That man...who was he?"

"No one you need concern yourself with."

...

...

"He knew me."

"He is none of your concern, Asset. Now silence."

...

...

"...and I knew him."

_"Wipe him."_

 

***

 

Again.

…

_Again._

…

_**Again.** _

 

***

 

The Asset does not retain previous mission details for long. He requires regular maintenance to ensure stability. Previous mission details are unnecessary for his future missions.

He does not remember his first mission. Success. He does not remember his tenth mission. Success. He does not remember his twentieth mission. Failure. His handlers find him wandering the streets of London, disoriented and resistant. He kills half his retrieval party, including his primary handler, before he is brought down.

A routine for regular maintenance is established, to prevent this occurring again. It mostly stops episodes during a mission. The Asset turns on his handlers more often instead. It is the most feared position in the organisation for those in the know, a virtual death sentence. He is out of cryofreeze for month-long segments only at most, yet manages to take out at least two handlers each time. The survivors give thanks to the necessity of cryofreezing the Asset.

The Asset does not remember any of this, of course. Unnecessary.

 

***

 

In 1963, the Asset, codename Winter Soldier, is reactivated. A young man is placed as the Asset's handler. Blonde, with blue eyes. A square jaw line. The Asset is trained to observe much more than that, but it is these features he comes back to, traces over and over again.

The new handler notices. Smiles.

The new handler is lenient with him, even during punishments, lets him recover before the next training session. Gives him food and drink outside his authorised meal times, talks at him as if, as if he should have a sentience. Ensures he knows his place, wields the pain and the cold until his programming is corrected, then wipes his lank hair away and smiles in reward. Well done. He hurts and hurts but nothing matters then. He stays down peacefully.

He must protect the new handler. At all costs. Until, until...decommissioning? He does not know where this imperative comes from, it was not explicitly given to him, let alone any time period for it. The imperative arises with the handler's features. The blonde hair, the bright blue eyes–he must protect.

He must correct.

If the Asset could move by his own will, he would rub his aching skin. There is something incorrect. He is missing certain parameters, but has no one to ask for clarification, since he does not know the origins of this imperative.

He does not ask his owners. They would recalibrate him, and that is another imperative–avoid recalibration. It would wipe his human-shaped imperative, unacceptable as failure. He does not ask the handler, since the handler is the one triggering unknown parameters. The handler cannot be incorrect, except something is incorrect.

The smile, even, no tilt at one corner. The blonde hair, just the slightest bit wavy. The shoulders, strangely broad but not quite–

And the eyes, blue and thickly shaded but not quite–

–(enough).

The Asset does not speak.

 

***

 

He is disobedient. He knows. He is volatile. He knows. He was difficult to program in the first place, violent even in the middle of being programmed. Close to being written off, cut losses.

_He is too recognisable already; if he cannot be made to obey, what is the use–_

That is not an issue anymore.

He does not remember his first handlers. He does not remember snarling at them, demanding _where is he, I saw him, where is, where is—_

He does not remember the blood. Slick over his hands, his arms, his face. Stomach roiling, but _where—_

He does not remember, and it is no longer an issue.

They assign him a handler. Dark brown hair, blue eyes, a small chin cleft, and a myriad of other details he is trained to notice. It is the first three he comes back to, traces over and over.

His handler notices. Smirks.

The Asset, codename Captain, has many faults still. His handler is stringent about maintenance. All faults must be corrected as early as possible. The Asset must be vigilant about reporting possible faults, so he may be recalibrated as soon as possible. There is no avoiding recalibration, all faults are found eventually. Early reporting eases the process on everyone, he is told, and it is his duty to be of use, be obedient, do not be more of a burden.

He must not be a burden. Not more of one. Not to his handler, who stays through maintenance and recalibration, through his regular assigned meal times, through training, before and after missions. Always present, blue eyes focused at the Asset’s back, a hand firm at his shoulder, or tight around the back of his neck. Who wields the pain and the cold until he is corrected, and smiles when the process is successful, as if he has done something impossible instead of the, the _right_ thing to do.

The Asset must not be a burden. He is obedient. Until, until—decommissioning.

Because the Asset is obedient, he does not report his itching flesh at the sight of his handler’s strangely sharp jawline, his golden tan. The thin definition of his lips. If the Asset could move by his own will, his fingers would curl. Pencil. Would curl around a pencil. Or a stick of charcoal.

Smudge the lines. Start over. Because there is, there is–an imperfection. Imperfections.

There is something incorrect. The handler cannot be incorrect, except the handler is incorrect.

He observes. Colour, lines and contours coming together into sharp features, with a cocky smirk painted on top. The final shape, the finish, it is, it’s—

—(wrong).

The Asset is not a burden. He is obedient.

The Asset does not speak.

 

***

 

Captain America is a hero. The world's first, and only, successful super-soldier. His image is a symbol.

(What his image is meant to represent has been lost to time and several decades worth of political campaigns.)

Behind the symbol there was a man. The man has long been pronounced dead. His belongings remain. As what happens to all symbols and their champions, his belongings are collected.

Scattered across museums and across private collections are sketches, drawn by the hand of Captain America himself. Pre-serum pictures, and post-serum. Landscape sketches, of an alley, a grocery store, a street. Coney Island at sunset, in shades of black, grey and white. Typical still life pieces, of fruit bowls, vases, flowers. Portraits, of a woman with remarkably similar features to Steve Rogers tired and smiling, of strangers going about their day, of Peggy Carter tall and stern, Colonel Phillips frowning, the Howling Commandos sitting around a campfire, Peggy Carter, oh yes, more than a few of her.

And of course, amongst his oldest subjects, Bucky Barnes.

Bucky Barnes as a boy, rendered in clumsy lines; Bucky Barnes as a teenager, hauling crates and scoffing and grinning, motion depicted in ever increasing detail. Bucky Barnes as a young man, accompanying a girl, smoking, smirking cocksure and confident.

On a slow news day, this pops up occasionally. Steve Rogers, not only a hero, but also an artist. Usually accompanied by photos of a few sketches, Peggy and Bucky among them as love interest and best friend.

Of course, the world never finds out until decades after Captain America’s death that Peggy Carter, aside from being a love interest, can not only wield a gun, she can also wield thousands of men and women in an international counter-intelligence agency. Being a founder and the longest running director of Shield and all.

(The world collectively blows its shit when this publically comes out. The remnants of the Howling Commandos and their associates laugh themselves sick. Peggy Carter, retired, sits back and watches the circus unfold with amusement.)

And the world never, ever finds the sketches kept among Peggy Carter’s belongings. Sketches of a man’s jawline, covered in short rough stubble, rendered in excruciating detail. Heavily lidded eyes, shaded as accurately as possible in black, grey and white, and a few later sketches done more roughly, more ponderously, in shades of blue guiltily exchanged for a month’s saved ration of booze. Lips, shaded full and lush, a dip lovingly creased between the shifting shades of deep grey, shaped into an indolent smirk.

No whole picture is needed, not even for the most clueless person. Peggy Carter has never been clueless, and upon finding them in her youth, could not be less surprised.

Despite being surprisingly good at keeping a secret, Steve Rogers had still been one of the worst liars in the world, and what hummed between them, possibilities for an _after the war_ they never had, had been genuine. As genuine as Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, always in orbit of each other, in Brooklyn's numerous alleys, on the battlefield, in newsreels, in comic books, twin grins aimed at each other and arms clasped.

It's more than enough for Peggy, and the world has no stake in these matters. Let those twin grins rest in peace.

Peggy Carter never believed in ghosts. But she buried Steve Rogers' remaining secret in Captain America's shadow, and hoped he got some form of peace after death.

 

***

 

Their owners allow them to meet just once. For a spar. Simple curiosity; which Asset is stronger?

(A mistake, such a mistake. An earthquake and a tsunami are not always separate, and all the more devastating together.)

They are given masks to wear, armed, and told to fight. Told not to knock each others' masks off, but other than that, no limits, fight until a whistle blows.

They lunge for each other. Knives and bloody slashes and broken bones and gleaming bone shards, they tear at each other like animals, like forces of nature, brutal and unrelenting and uncaring of wounds or pain, and deadly beautiful because of it. When the whistle blows, there are two bodies, broken and splattered in red, scrambling weakly to pin the other. They freeze at the whistle blow. Scramble upright, scramble away.

Blue eyes, the Winter Soldier notices. Thickly shaded. Broad shoulders, massive from the back, _sheltering_. He broke one of them for evoking that thought, because he does not understand what it means.

Blue eyes, the Captain notices. Heavily lidded. Dark hair. Long hair, and expressionless eyes. There is something wrong here, he realises, something wrong and something right, _yes, show me, where is, where is he_. He gouged the skin around those eyes bloody for evoking that thought, because he does not understand what it means.

Their separate handlers step inside the training room. The Winter Soldier's handler beckons him forward. The Captain's handler goes to him.

There is grey peppering the once blonde hair of the Winter Soldier's handler. Blonde itself fading, growing paler in shade. Wrinkles around the corners of those blue eyes, around the mouth. Lips thinning. Shoulders broad, back never exposed reassuringly to the Winter Soldier, and the Winter Soldier reaches out waveringly to tug forward–

The Captain's handler is young still. With a strangely sharp jawline, his golden tan. The thin definition of his smirking lips, as he reaches out to clasp around–

The Captain steps aside. Brushes past the, the _wrong_ , seizes the Winter Soldier's outstretched arm with a masked scowl. Yanks him forward, and the mask off.

Stubble. Pale skin, a correction. Softer jawline, correction. Oh, and full, lush lips. Correction. His fingers itch to trace, and trace again and trace perfection, _yes, found you_.

But first.

There's red slicked over the Captain's hands. More red. The _wrong_ lies crumpled against the wall, head flung so forcefully against the wall its facial features are crumpled and deformed. Mouth grotesquely open, silence it–he shoves his sparring knife through the wreck, through to the hilt.

" ** _Liar!_** " he snarls, and rips his bloody mask away.

The Winter Soldier is staring. The Winter Soldier's handler is backing away, barking orders to subdue, capture, kill if necessary. Boots stomp against the ground in the distance, soldiers approaching to subdue them forcefully.

"Winter Soldier, I gave you an order!" the Winter Soldier's handler snaps.

The Winter Soldier stares at the bright blonde hair. The thickly lashed blue eyes. That square jaw line, the broad shoulder his right hand, flesh hand, is trapped against. Touching. So close to that bobbing throat, thumb brushing pale skin, _yes, yes_ –

– _enough_.

He wipes at the blood on the Captain's face. The Captain's eyes flicker to the, the _inadequacy_. The _lie_. The Winter Soldier knows what he must do.

The Winter Soldier lunges. Metal hand curls around the working throat. Crush, pull, fling, and the grey-blonde head crumples between extreme force and the hard wall. The Winter Soldier flips over a sparring knife.

It joins the first one pinned to the wall.

The Winter Soldier looks back at the Captain once more. Wipes impulsively at the red smudge still on his cheek, and realises he is only making it worse with his filthy hands, metal and flesh. The Captain's lips parody a smile. The Winter Soldier echoes it.

 

***

 

(When after-reports reach the desks of superiors later on, a few reports will mention it in passing. Two dead-eyed men, gored and broken and gory, smiling knife-sharp and beautiful. A great pity they were too unstable for honeypot missions.

Only a few will mention it, in trembling handwriting barely legible from remembered terror. Because they are the very few that survive the first onslaught of the Captain and his Winter Soldier, the Winter Soldier and his Captain.)

 

***

 

"I'm with you," the Winter Soldier voices, "until–until–"

Until when? Do ghosts have an end?

"I'm with you," the Captain echoes, "until."

Does it matter if there is an end?

Soldiers flood the room. Surround them, shoot tranquilisers and bullets, charge with knives and prods drawn. More still come, reinforcements against the two greatest Assets ever created. There is no winning this. There is no winning, two men against an unending mass. There is no goal in the first place. Just two ghosts' existence.

Steve Rogers had never faltered against overwhelming odds, regardless of potential outcome. Even when armed with nothing but blue tights and a cardboard shield on a one-man rescue mission into enemy territory. Bucky Barnes was the crucial factor. And Bucky Barnes, always charging after his tiny, mouthy friend with a heart too big for that weak body, watching from behind and ahead and beside with gun drawn watching huge shoulders move fast and powerful, reassuringly there, alive, in battle; had never faltered against the Captain's opponents, no matter the odds. No matter the potential outcome. Steve Rogers was the only factor that mattered.

Those two men are long dead. Their ghosts are not so dissimilar though.

The Captain and the Winter Soldier slaughter the soldiers surrounding them. Then they run. No aim, no goal. Run, and lay waste to everything. _Everything._

 

***

 

It is chaos, and violence, barked orders followed to the slaughter and ignored, failed evacuations. Two forces of nature sweeping through in synch, and nowhere to hide.

Spiders have always been good at finding places to hide, even in empty space. The Black Widow is a spider still, and she follows that rule.

Natalia, the young woman known as the Black Widow, takes it a step further. She takes her skills, her fearsome reputation and her red ledger, and disappears in the chaos. Presumed dead.

 

***

 

(The few that escape will also report the facility, once a major base of operations, is no longer usable. Buildings collapsed and equipment destroyed, main power cut off and back-up generators not functional in some parts of the base. Over sixty percent of the assigned staff, including the entire science division, are dead. In fact, the science department wing is mostly inaccessible and structurally unstable after suffering several explosions. Cost-benefit analysis suggests the better option would be to rebuild somewhere else, than rebuilding the old base.

The base is cleaned out for sensitive material and salvageable pieces. Inaccessible parts are bombed. The media will report several gas explosions during a gas drilling project in a remote corner of the world. No one will be the wiser.)

 

***

 

Where is there for a ghost to go? Where is there to go, when you remember almost nothing?

Nowhere, except what you currently know.

What two ghosts covered in blood, dead-eyed, lacking memory, surrounded by a sea of dead bodies and exploding machinery know, is each other. They know each other, stroking red-smeared hands over each other occasionally, tracing _rightness_ , _perfection_.

And they know the cold sleep.

They have come back to each other. Together, they go back to the cold sleep.

They are Assets. They are the best Assets produced by the science division. Ruthless, overwhelmingly powerful and skilled, trained to observe, analyse, assess, and above all, be obedient. They are all of them, until they are not the last one.

It is the one thing the scientists never seemed to realise. That the Assets, straight after being wiped, are obedient, are dazed. Watch straight ahead, peripherals monitored unconsciously as only the most finely honed Assets do, while the scientists prepare them for cryofreeze. They note all details, their famed Assets, and remember them for later reporting. So they note the scientists preparing them, preparing the cryostasis pods, the drugs necessary for injection and how to use all of it. Note the same procedure several times. Many times.

It is clear in their memory as nothing else is, clearer even than each other. They both trust this.

Together, they prepare a cryostasis tube. Just one. Ensure it is attached to the back-up power. Inject each other with the appropriate drugs and, as their limbs grow heavy and clumsy, help each other stumble into the tube. Heave the great metal door of their metal coffin closed.

Cryostasis tubes are only designed for one person. It matters little to the Captain or the Winter Soldier. They arrange their broken, beaten pieces together as they count down breaths to the cold sleep; entangle blood-soaked, knife-gouged legs between legs and metal, ribs to broken ribs, shoulders to broken shoulders. The upper head space will only fit one head, so the Winter Soldier lowers his head closer to one broken shoulder, nose and lips pressed to the throat he had brushed a thumb against before (and _before_ ).

Colder and colder, ice steam obscuring their vision. They bruise the cold ache into each other, _with you until, until–_

Three.

Two.

One.

 

***

 

There is no dreaming in the ice. No breathing. Just stillness. Just airless. And the chill, it never leaves.

His insides are all ice. Lungs frozen attempted mid-breath, swollen and solid with crystallised water. So easy, in this state, to crush those lungs, or that heart frozen frantic mid-beat. Tear out those iced organs, crush them as easily as smashing a popsicle. Scattered shards everywhere, red tinted blue glazed in white.

Maybe once, twice, ten times and twenty times and so on, he had tried. More ice than living tissue, still vaguely conscious, ice needles driving through his flesh. When he knew what a popsicle was, when red, white and blue meant something to him, when he felt he had reason to even try. He was given to the cold sleep in restraints, and even then, he tried.

Then there was no reason to try anymore. He did not remember any conceived reason why he should, did not know he did not remember.

And now? There is still no reason to try that he remembers. And every reason not to.

What he knows, all he knows, is here, in the arms of the cold sleep.

Blue eyes slip closed.

 

***

 

This is how you preserve a ghost.

This is how you destroy a ghost.

This is how you resurrect a ghost.

 

***

 

"What _is_ that? A coffin?"

"Cryostasis tubes. It was said among KGB agents that the best operatives were placed in cryostasis, to prolong their use. Do you remember rumours about the Winter Soldier?"

"Yeah. Regular ghost story that pops up every few years, nobody can prove he exists–shit, Nat, you're kidding me. He's real?"

"He existed, Clint. I would know, he trained me for a brief period. He was one of two operatives put in cryostasis, others didn't survive the process. I suspect he was enhanced."

"Enhanced how? Like the X-Men? Like the Fantastic Four?"

"Like Captain America."

"No way. No one's managed to work out the super-soldier serum, or they'd be bragging about it from the rooftops, right in the middle of a villain monologue. Closest so far is the Hulk, and that didn't work out so well."

"It's only a suspicion for now. Nick only has my word to go on about the Winter Soldier even existing, let alone him being enhanced. On one person's word, especially with my history, it's not a lot to go on."

"You said there were two operatives put in cryostasis. That only enhanced people survived cryostasis. What about the other operative?"

"Definitely enhanced. More recently acquired, there wasn't any mention about him amongst the KGB until the eighties. He helped evaluate senior agents. He wasn't used like the Winter Soldier to make a statement, he was put on strictly low key missions, though he was just as skilled. Probably the only match for the Winter Soldier."

"Not complaining, but why?"

"I don't know."

"You mean you suspect, but you don't have any evidence yet. Do you know who our two super-soldier copies are?"

"Call this in. Have the science department try and open this up safely. You can find out then, you'll never believe me otherwise."

Natasha pauses, and peers closely at the window installed around the head of the cryostasis tube. The window is heavily frosted over after many years, powered by the remnants of the self-maintained back-up generator, even decades later. There is nothing visible past the layers of ice. Nevertheless, she thinks she can make out a faint shadow, a lump far too large and oddly shaped to be human. Or, as she remembers two echoing smiles, knife-sharp, blood-drenched and oddly beautiful, to be just one man.

She thinks maybe she shouldn't pull on this thread. Except, they indirectly helped Natalia become Natasha Romanoff. Whether she wants to or not, she has a debt to pay, and after visiting the Smithsonian and seeing two faces straight out of her occasional recurring dream grin back at her, she suddenly has the tools and ability to do so.

"Winter Soldier, huh," Clint says, tapping at his phone. "Well, ghost stories have to start from somewhere, right?"

"They start from men."


End file.
